Mulatu is one of Ethiopia's major musicians. A multi-instrumentalist, mastering vibraphone, keyboards, organ, and percussion, Mulatu is credited with adding instruments associated with Latin styles such as bongos and congas to Ethiopian music. In New York City he founded the
show more...
Ethiopian Quintet (comprised mostly of Puerto Ricans), recorded his first album in 1966 before returning to Addis Adaba at the end of the decade, where he blended Ethiopian traditional music with Latin jazz to create a unique hybrid he called "Ethio-jazz." Recently, Mulatu has been the center of renewed interest in the West through a compilation on the Parisian series "Ethiopiques" (Buda Musique) and a 10" 4-track compilation on the Soundway label of Brighton England. Most notably, a number of Mulatu's compositions were featured in director Jim Jarmush's 2005 independent film Broken Flowers, starring Bill Murray and Julie Delpy. While he remains a ubiquitous presence in the Ethiopian music scene, as club owner, music school founder, radio DJ, composer, arranger and instrumentalist, Mulatu frequently collaborates with the Massachusetts-based Either/Orchestra, one of jazz's longest running and most important large ensembles.
Mulatu just completed a 2007-08 Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard University, where his goals were to research how to develop the krarr, a traditional Ethiopian five-string instrument, with electronic music specialists; write an opera based on Ethiopian Coptic Church music written around AD 380, which will be conducted using the mekwamia, an ancient conducting stick; and write a book on the historical context of instruments used in the Ethiopian Coptic Church and their contribution to the development of world music. The first section of Mulatu's "The Yared Opera," which blends old and new was premiered at Harvard's Sanders Theater in April 2008. Mulatu hopes future performances of the opera which is based in part on the chant of St. Yared, the founder of Ethiopian church music, will feature live musicians in concert with the electronic version, and staged at the rock churches of Lalibela, a holy city in northern Ethiopia.
Visit us at www.wgbh.org/forum to explore our entire collection of lectures.
show less...